Slide 1

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 2

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 3

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 4

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 5

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 6

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 7

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 8

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 9

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 10

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 11

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 12

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 13

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 14

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 15

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 16

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 17

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 18

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 19

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 20

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 21

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 22

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 23

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 24

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 25

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 26

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 27

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 28

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 29

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 30

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 31

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 32

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 33

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 34

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 35

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 36

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 37

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 38

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 39

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 40

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 41

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 42

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 43

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 44

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 45

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 46

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 47

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 48

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 49

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 50

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 51

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 52

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 53

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 54

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 55

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 56

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 57

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 58

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 59

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 60

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 61

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 62

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 63

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 64

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 65

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 66

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 67

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 68

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 69

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 70

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 71

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 72

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 73

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 74

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 75

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 76

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 77

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 78

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 79

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 80

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 81

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 82

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 83

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb


Slide 84

Use of Rockets

• A very small (but not the
smallest) gyroscope.
• For stabilizing phones and
cameras.
• Largest one are used as
stabilizer in ocean liner and
yachts.

Unusual weapons of WWII

Unusual weapons of WWII

• Anti-tank dogs
• Deployed by the Soviet Union
• It was an attempt to halt the
German advance during 1941.

Unusual weapons of WWII

• The dogs were kept hungry, and
food was placed under tanks in
order to teach them to look
under vehicles for food.
• In action, these dogs proved less
than effective.

Pigeon Guided Missile

Pigeon Guided Missile

• proposed by American
psychologist B.F. Skinner.
• later Project Orcon, for "organic
control"
• An image of the target would be
projected in front of it, and the
pigeon would be trained to
recognize it.

Pigeon Guided Missile

• It would then peck on one of four
levers (up, down, left or right)
until the target was dead centre
of the screen.

Pigeon Carriers
• United Kingdom used About 250,000 pigeons
during World War II by all branches of the
military and the Special Operations Executive.
• Flying from mainland Europe to Britain, the
birds heroically delivered all sorts of messages
through a gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and
potshots from soldiers.

• The Dickin Medal, the highest possible
decoration for valor given to non-human
animals, was awarded to 32 pigeons, including
the United States Army Pigeon Service's G.I.
Joe and the Irish pigeon Paddy.

• The head of the Air Ministry Pigeon
Section reported in 1945 that
pigeons could be trained to deliver
small explosives or bio-weapons to
precise targets.
• The ideas were not taken up by the
committee,
• In 1948 the UK military stated that
pigeons were of no further use.

• In November 2012, the skeleton of a
World War II carrier pigeon is found
in a man's chimney in England.
• A red canister attached to a leg bone
holds a coded message UK agency
can't crack.

Anti-Communication Falcons
They patrolled the air over the
British coasts in two-hour shifts,
and took down any pigeons flying
off toward the mainland.

Project Habakkuk

Project Habakkuk
• Suggested by Geoffrey Pyke.
• He invented Pykrete as a response to the
steel shortage at the beginning of World
War II.
• It is a mix of water and 14 percent
sawdust in a mold, let it freeze, and you
have Pykrete.
• It doesn't shatter like ice, it's strong
enough to use in building projects, and
strangely, it doesn't appear to melt.

• The aircraft carrier (carrying 150 planes
) design called for a giant carrier (2000ft)
long, built out of pykrete, fitted with an
extensive cooling system to prevent the
pykrete melting.
• The British Military eventually decided
that the 10 million pound price tag for a
carrier was not something they were
willing to risk.
• See “myth buster” episode about
“Pykrete”.

Comparative properties of materials
Mechanical
properties

Ice

Concrete

Pykrete

Crushing strength
[MPa]

3.447

17.240

7.584

Tensile strength
[MPa]

1.103

1.724

4.826

Density [kg/m³]

910

2500

980

Acoustic Radars
• A passive device used during early years of
WW2.
• Became obsolete when Radar was developed.
• A variation of that was called sound mirror.

Czech one man aircraft locator

Japan’s “war tubas”

Sound Mirrors

Sound Mirrors
• They are acoustic reflectors, dubbed
by locals as the “listening ears.”
• These structures were built to
protect harbors and coastal towns
from airborne attacks.

• Serving as an early warning system,
microphones placed at the focal
point of the reflector enabled it to
detect sounds from flying aircraft
over the English Channel, at a range
of 30 kilometers.
• Became obsolete with the
development of RADAR.

Sound Mirrors

• How is it used today?

Also, “Kent Acoustic Mirror”

The “Who Me?” Stench Spray
• This weapon stunk so bad that it
didn’t even reach deployment.
• Developed by the Office of Strategic
Services, it was intended to be used
by the French Resistance to
demoralize German officers by
spraying the content, which smelled
of fecal matter.

• However, the sulfur compounds used
were extremely volatile and, therefore,
very difficult to control.
• As a result, the person spraying the
substance often got as smelly as his
unfortunate victim.
• Though this was a top-secret weapon, a
recipe of ingredients to make it can now
be found on the Internet.

• A recipe for a kilogram
• 919 g of white mineral oil as an inert
carrier
• 20 g of skatole (3-methylindole)
• 20 g of n-butanoic acid
• 20 g of n-pentanoic acid
• 20 g of n-hexanoic acid
• 1 g of pentanethiol
http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx#LfAyGdHDIgk0PjK7.99

Rotabuggy

• British experimental aircraft
• was assembled by helicopter pioneer
Raul Hafner. Better known as the Blitz
Buggy by Hafner.
• Despite looking absolutely ridiculous and
almost cartoon-like, the Rotabuggy
successfully went airborne, reaching
gliding speeds of 45 mph in its first trial,
in 1943.

• It flew at 65 mph for 10 minutes in 1944.
• It was also surprisingly sturdy,
withstanding falls from 7 ft. without
experiencing damage.
• Despite being an engineering success and
deemed to be “highly satisfactory,” the
Rotabuggy was overlooked and phased
out.

The Bouncing Bomb
• Better known as the “Dam Busters”,
and used to blow up the Ruhr dams
in Operation Chastise.
• The bombs were issued for combat
use when torpedo attacks and aerial
raids on German hydroelectric
proved fruitless.

• Torpedo nets protected and detonated
conventional torpedoes from impact.

• Because of its bounce, it became
very effective at avoiding torpedo
nets, and its ability to be aimed
directly at a target was seen as a
huge advantage.

The Bouncing Bomb

De Lisle Commando Rifle

De Lisle Commando Rifle
• Silencer.
• Designed by William Godfray de Lisle
(known as Godfray),
• It is was so quiet that moving the bolt to
chamber the next round makes more
sound than firing a round.
• The De Lisle was only manufactured in
small numbers and was exclusive to
Special Forces.

Earthquake Bomb

Earthquake Bomb
• The bombs are built with a tough armored tip
and would reach supersonic speeds when
dropped from 40 thousand feet high,
penetrating deep underground and
detonating.
• The shock would often create a deep crater
and produce a miniature earthquake capable
of destroying the infrastructure of buildings
and dams.

• Earthquake bombs were used to destroy the
V2 factories, sink the German battleship
Tirpitz and destroy docked U2 boats.
• It was put to use 41 times.

Earthquake Bomb

Major Martin

• “Major Martin” was a homeless man,
who died of pneumonia and was
then used as a weapon of deceit by
the British in Operation Mincemeat.
• The body was disguised as a dead
Royal Marines Officer and left to be
found in the sea off the Spanish
coast, with a briefcase full of top
secret files chained to his wrist.

• The trick worked, and the Germans
pulled thousands of troops from
Sicily to defend Sardinia (which the
faked documents revealed intention
of the allied for invasion) .
• Thousands of Allied troops owed
their lives to the deception of Major
Martin.

Electromagnetic Degaussing

• The primary goal was to render the ship
undetectable, and invisible, from magnetically
fused undersea mines and torpedoes.
• The degaussing of a ship involved the
generation of a powerful electromagnetic field
onboard.
• Many people also believe the electromagnetic
degaussing attempt on the USS Engstorm
might have influenced the story of the famous
“Philadelphia Experiment” or “Project
Rainbow”

Hollywood chimes in:

Fire balloons or
balloon bomb

• Weapon launched by Japan.
• A hydrogen balloon with a load varying
from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary to
one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb
and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices
attached.
• They were designed as a cheap weapon
intended to make use of the jet stream
over the Pacific Ocean and wreak havoc
on Canadian and American cities,
forests, and farmland.

• The balloons were relatively
ineffective.
• Between November 1944 and April
1945, Japan launched over 9,300 fire
balloons.
• About 300 balloon bombs were
found or observed in North America,
killing six people and causing a small
amount of damage.

Panjandrum

• Burlesque title of an imaginary person in some
nonsense lines by Samuel Foote.
• Name of a secret weapon.

How did it do?

German Sonic Cannon

German Sonic Cannon
• During the early 1940s Axis
engineers developed a sonic cannon
that could literally shake a person
apart from the inside.
• A methane gas combustion
chamber leading to two parabolic
dishes pulse-detonated at roughly
44hz.

• This sound wave created pressures that
could kill a man up to 50 yards away in 30
seconds
• At distances of 160–660 ft the sound
waves could act on organ tissues and
fluids by repeatedly compressing and
releasing compressive resistant organs
such as the kidneys, spleen, and liver.

• This infrasound, magnified by the dish
reflectors, caused vertigo and nausea at
220–440 yd by vibrating the middle ear
bones.

The Krummlauf (curved gun)

The Krummlauf on display
at the Wehrtechnische
Studiensammlung in
Koblenz, Germany.

• The curved barrel included a periscope
sighting device for shooting around corners
from a safe position.

• Various versions were built:
– "I" version for infantry use
– "P" version for use in tanks
– versions with 30°, 45°, 60° and 90° bends

• The bent barrel attachments had
very short lifespan
–approx. 300 rounds for the 30°
version
–160 rounds for the 45°

• Another problem was that the bending caused
the bullets to shatter and exit the barrel in
multiple fragments, producing an unintended
shotgun effect.

The Vortex Cannon

• The shells contained coal-dust and a
slow-burning explosive in the center.
• If all circumstances were perfect and
favorable, the strange device seemed to
work fairly well.
• The range of the prototype was
estimated to be about 100m.
• The gun was never used in practice.

Strange Tanks
Swimming Tank, Flame Thrower Tank, Rhinoceros
tanks, Flail Tank

Early Drone (Operation Aphrodite)

Survival Research Laboratories
• http://srl.org/info.html
• Located in Petaluma
• Is a machine performance art group credited
for pioneering the genre of large-scale machine
performance.
• organization of creative technicians dedicated
to re-directing the techniques, tools, and
tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in
practicality, product or warfare.

Vertical take off/landing

Death Ray
• Originally a sci fi theory!
• Japan weighted construction of
atomic bomb versus death ray.
• Ended up choosing death ray as a
more plausible weapon.

• Called The Ku-go (Death Ray)
• An Article on a death-ray device invented
by Nikola Tesla had been in The New York
Times (July 11, 1934), and was picked up
by the Japanese press.
• In this article, Tesla was quoted as saying
that his beam would "drop an army in its
tracks and bring down squadrons of
airplanes 250 miles away."

• Invention of Magnetron
(producing microwave) in 1940
was a giant step toward
possibility of making this
weapon possible.

• In 1943, work began at the Shimada City
research facility on developing a highpower magnetron that, if not as capable as
Tesla had boasted, could at least
incapacitate an aircraft.
• By the end of the war, their effort had
produced a 20-cm magnetron with a
continuous output of 100 kW.
• This was far short of the desired 500 kW,
which itself would likely have been
insufficient for the mission.

Invasion Glider

German Jet/Rocket plane (Natter )

• Rocket powered interceptor, which was
to be used in a very similar way to a
manned surface-to-air missile.
• After vertical take-off the majority of the
flight to the Allied bombers was to be
controlled by an autopilot.
• The primary mission of the relatively
untrained pilot, perhaps better called a
gunner, was to aim the aircraft at its
target bomber and fire its armament of
rockets.

• The pilot and the fuselage containing
the rocket motor would then land
under separate parachutes, while the
nose section was disposable.
• The design was so dangerous that
the German Air Ministry rejected it.

• The designer persuaded Himmler to
fund the program in secret.
• The only manned vertical take-off
flight on 1 March 1945 ended in the
death of the test pilot.

Early Shuttle

And the weirdest project
The project X-ray

Project X-Ray—The Bat Bomb